Art Meets Science: A Different Physics

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space my father brought home the blue

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jacketed government-issued views of the surface of the Moon parsed printed and

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bearing the cross hairs of our optics on modeled fields where illusion made

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bubbles of craters as we watched my small body tracking toward a moon cycle

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still years away toward wings I would seek to merit and a paper to confirm my

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degree in postulating the deep workings of a universe but not the world who

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sings to us first before the logic of reason before speech equations forged in

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the engines of memory hot interiors of moments that melt thought to muscle and

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words to thought good afternoon and

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welcome to our art meets science at SLAC lecture at different physics the poetics

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of discovery the art meets science lecture series investigates the

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intersections between these creative approaches to exploring the world around

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us I'm Angela Anderson from the slack Office of Communications and I thank you

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all for coming this afternoon and I welcome you to stay for the reception following the talk it'll take place in

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the lobby just outside the auditorium doors you just heard from poet Lisa Rosenberg who will share more of her

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fascinating poems in just a moment here to introduce her is Roger Blandford

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professor of physics and particle physics and former director of the Kavli Institute for particle astrophysics and

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cosmology whose home is right here in this building Roger and his group study

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some of the most extreme events in the universe such as black hole neutron stars and white dwarfs I'm sure

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we'll learn more about the poetry of science as he engages our poet speaker

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today in conversation following her presentation please welcome Roger Blandford through poetry essays in

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conversation Lisa Rosenberg works from shared territory in science and art she holds

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degrees in both physics and creative writing and was a wallace stegner fellow

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in poetry here at Stanford prior to the Fellowship she worked as a research

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engineer in space craft hardware and flew as a private pilot she later

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founded the marketing consulting practice and recently served as the second poet laureate of San Mateo County

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her debut poetry collection a different physics was awarded the red mountain

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poetry prize released last year Lisa's

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poems explore natural and cultural landscapes the art of making and the

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drive to question inherited models she's creating a series of Poli disciplinary

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essays and engagements bringing pools of poetry and science to the ocean discourse on our modes of inquiry and

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enterprise she looks forward to continuing this work in the newly

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awarded Geraci residency for scientists and artists in 2020 the Rosenberg

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[Applause] Thank You Roger for volunteering or

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agreeing to be drafted into conversation with me today thank all of you for being

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here and my thanks also to this very gifted team of people here at SLAC who put

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together these events I'd also like to acknowledge the great generosity of

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thought of those who created conceived of and created this lecture series of

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art meets science and knowing that this space has probably witnessed many more

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lectures than poetry readings I am going to talk for just a bit give a reading

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and then Roger and I will we'll be in conversation to explore more of the

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questions that the poems and the talk bring up and then welcome questions from

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all of you so art meets science and they

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do meet in many ways and in more ways than intersections and the notions of

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complementarity can reveal I found that if we look through a lens of commonality

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and from that shared territory that is really where some of the very powerful

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tools and insights can come from we know

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from you know current conversations ongoing investigations that poetry and

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physics specifically art and science more broadly are these exquisite ways of

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describing and gaining understanding about this nonlinear universe a very

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cyclical world and they offer the opportunity to be in something other

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than our ingrained ways of thinking and working so the more we can use those

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invitations to to think differently than we normally think whether it's outside of our

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discipline or outside of our habits the more we do have access to the processes

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that put us in discovery mode a poem a

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piece of scientific work these are processes of exploration that allow us

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to be in synthesis which is one word for insight to come to discoveries or

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epiphany and we can think of it Tiffany as we could discontinuous insight you

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know that kind of huge leap where we don't see the small logical steps or

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ways of coming to those things that really are emergent properties of

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complex dynamic systems and in that sense I I do consider the act of poetic

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composition and also with reading and experiencing a poem to be exploratory spaces poetry is problem-solving on

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multiple levels with many interdependencies and we're usually

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talking about emergent effects as opposed to discrete characteristics so

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in the spirit of that I chose the the poem space to open with we're going to

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go back in time just for a moment to you

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know from that was an animation of a model of dark matter that was on the screen there these are very old

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photographs I collected this collage from hard copies at home from these old

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JPL notebooks that my father had we used to have the outdated versions lying

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around the house to peruse wonder over or scribble on whatever the case may be

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so many of you probably have had that experience of you know it's a bubble no

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it's a crater and then being able to make it go back and forth which was great fun but

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mostly I shared this piece because in part it's a very condensed biography it

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answers questions that you could not answer in a single paragraph or more but

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more importantly because this really was a case where I had to remain or put

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myself in a mode of exploration and not go where I was trying to drive it so I

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had a very tightly held agenda of what I wanted this poem to do I wanted it to be

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so it biographical and I wanted it to arrive at some great kind of cosmological insight or confluence of

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the artistic in the scientific and I had to let that go

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it was um it went through many many versions over years finally ended up in

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the format it has when I decided to open with the line about my father bringing these these photographs of these books

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home and the Wonder and to follow that wonder and instead of ending up at a

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great cosmological insight I ended up at something very very specific about my humaneness that I would not have found

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otherwise so I I would like to talk a little bit about the process of

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exploration and discovery and then read some poems that aren't necessarily about

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science per se and I use the word about very reluctantly whenever I discuss

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poetry but poems that illustrate different ways that that process of

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exploration might happen on different sets of constraints and I have to say I

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love being here and talking that way because it needs to be an engineering

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world kind of my everyday speak loaded with too many acronyms and then the

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acronyms fall away and then we we use say the language of the literary world or the linguistics side of things and so

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we'll bring back in just a few words like constraints so what is our work our

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work whether we are building a poem making a

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poem or hunting for a quasar we have an initial point we have a point we end up

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at and we have a process in the middle so um you go back to dark matter in a

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bit in a very simple sense we I mean invite us to really open up our language

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because our language and our thinking are very much coupled and the more we can create a larger frame for our

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terminology the more open we can be about it so if we call this a place where we embark calling X sub zero and

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where we arrive X sub N and it's not

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infinite but it's definitely iterative and this is you know what is this this

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is the process we can call exploration

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these points have very you know a variety of names in the art world we

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might call it you know an aesthetic impulse a personal a personal area of

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interest that we want to explore or that we want to we want to share with the

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world on the scientific or technical side it might be a contractual demand

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might be it might be a piece of some

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bigger project some scope of that at the

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base of both of those we hope is curiosity over here what do we want to

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arrive at you know when these could all come under the term agenda but is it a

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deliverable

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results Solutions the word that is

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thankfully I think got out of use in poetry I think Robert Frost had a wonderful way

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of saying it when he said a momentary stay again confusion some kind of

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understanding sometimes expression

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although that's not the primary role in poetry so some kind of understanding so

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we have these the impetus we have these kind of goals or objectives that we're

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driving toward no part of this it's without bias you know we hope to arrive

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at a discovery with the more loosely we can hold these desired outcomes the more

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we can head off that premature narrowing of our paths of inquiry that's that's

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really kind of the soapbox message but that brings up a lot of questions most

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of which start with how so how do we come become aware of our biases how do

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we set out when we don't know exactly where we're going or what we're looking

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for how do we proceed when we're being told what to find what to look for I

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think that's even harder and then how do we get unstuck when we do get stuck so

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this is really you know poetry has become poetry and language have become

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my lab of preference at this point I think because all my personal

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sensibilities just go toward patterns in sound and language and wordplay

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and all of that it's not to say that you know obviously there are many kinds of

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labs and I love being here in a lab talking about this web of language

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poetry is a lab in part because of the kinds of problem-solving that it has

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that it offers like physics it requires us to move fluidly between the micro the

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macro and the meta we can do that before

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we have the skills in higher math or after we've lost them those go away

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faster than muscle tone so how do we you

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know how to answer these house I think that you know what really can keep us

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honest in our process and by honest I mean not going to where we so badly want

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it to go the answer there really is craft you know process again to quote

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Robert Frost not that he's the only person who who's ever spoken with insight on poetry but his essay the

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figure of poem makes really talks about the process of discovery and you know he

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says no chairs and the writer no chairs and the reader no surprise for the

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writer no surprise for the reader and that you need to proceed line by line with the rules of language in order to

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discover what comes next not to just know where you want the piece to go and drive it there through

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your lovely devices that you spend years honing so he tells us the why because

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yeah we want to we want to have this element of surprise we want these every

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line you arrive at to be in the words of another teacher both inevitable and

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surprising you know that beautiful blend of fit so

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that's you know the why it doesn't tell us a lot about the how and I think that

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if if that becomes the next area of focus that's where we we will build out

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what you could think of as a meta toolset or the the common tool set from

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dual focus and Dual Immersion I do think

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that that whole aspect of you know what if insight what is discovery what are

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the things we what are the names we have for it that we're not even aware of you

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know today given the kinds of crises and challenges we're facing my default is

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usually to to become aware of it start naming it try to name it you know naming

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is both an act of observation and an act of synthesis we're both differentiating

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we're parsing we're really breaking things down and we are bringing things together so if you start to work on

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articulation you definitely find out where you have gaps it's a way of

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getting in stuck it's like going back to first principles so definitions new

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definitions functional definitions within the area that you're working in

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building taxonomy so that you can see things like apps and abundances and

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linkages whether existing or potential that's where I think that poetry really

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does offer us this fab fascinating a really demanding lab because we don't

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have those built in structures like equations or units to point out glaring

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inconsistencies that we might not be aware of you really have to hone your skills of

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taxonomy in poetry we can't rely on balancing equation or dimensional

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analysis or just keeping things consistent with variables so you you hone those

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taxonomical principles I am sure that

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there are many wonderful gems I am missing here but I want to have time for

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some poems given that we we did start a little late to allow for the parking so

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I'm going to share a few poems that are clips from my kind of journey as a maker

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and being in the process of discovery one of those one of those processes is

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staying in wonder and following that wonder and I'm often really compelled by

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things by objects whether they are inanimate objects or living creatures or

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once living creatures or ideas and following you know just going into that

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trying to either describe it or animate it give it a voice is one way when we

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follow what compels us in curiosity and

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to learn about why we are compelled can reveal a lot not only about what we're

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studying but about ourselves our preferences our biases our strengths and so forth this first piece is called

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Archaeopteryx perfect as nike head bent

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feathers arrested the imprint of upturned wings a likeness to wonder at

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your last flight dear prototype and the

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word prototype there I meant I think as much in a sense of Aeronautics as

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evolution it was an emotion given that our lives are very very far apart in

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time moon jellies and this is the first of probably several poems with the moon

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more poems with the moon this is a piece where I really did get stuck and I think

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I I was stuck for about two years in the middle of it and I I wanted I'm hoping

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most of you have seen the moon jelly exhibits at the Monterey aquarium I wanted to use the metaphor of those

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bright those bright arcs in the middle I wanted those to be a filament like an

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incandescent bulb I was shocked when I

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learned what they actually were and when I came back to that shock that was my

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entry point back into the poem and letting it go and finding out what

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metaphor it would then find moon jellies animate in the back lit black tank you

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fly lace edged ghost bells propelled by

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such grace as I cannot match with my clumsy spine my opacity the aging truths

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inside me unseen and unborn stung by the

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fact of your eggs in arced Rose hot

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flower in a clear spell one more moon

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poem and this again followed an object of wonder for me my father slide well

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which my mom found and this is a piece

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where I actually had no idea where it would go I just knew that this was an

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object of memorabilia for me certainly

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because it was found long after my father passed away and fascination at

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that whole era slide rule to love

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elegance of speed against a different meter of a different day

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day you walked out to suburbs and cars and the faithful hold of motor oil on

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hot asphalt and orange blossoms a sky

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ripe for the faint drone of airplanes their hulls designed with aligned

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precision and the fortitude of hand calculations of penciled graphs

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blueprints and circle templates on an angled drafting board mechanical tools

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where mechanical telephone bells call through the plumes above crowded

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ashtrays and coffee rings on flecked Formica the desks in rows the men in

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ties and shirts leaves I am almost there in my pixie cut and

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white shoes on family day a gape at the dark control room unaware of the beauty

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of logarithms the fluid promises of computing that this laminate rule will

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soon outlast its hayday a burnished leather case and all of us there is war

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on the news we are scaling the moon and everyone I love is living or yet to be

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born

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I'm in airplane mode in more ways than

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one but if you wear the mic you have to be an airplane mode or you lose your your sense of balance or something we

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are running a little tight on time so I'm gonna read three really short poems

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from my my time in like really in the engineering trenches and then a closing

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piece and then Roger and I will we'll go to the living and have a conversation so again I

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objects wanting to animate objects I found that that was one way that I could meet things that were daunting

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threatening things I had fear or or conflict around and but also to find

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beauty to find beauty in odd ways and odd things and places and admittedly a

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lot of this is pre digital paper era polygraph

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what are they sampling these slender and ten I who's clubbed tips startle and

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drift over paper tape which truths do they taste

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how many evade the thin dark stop they

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weep cleanroom I know you have more than

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one here on site do not shed your DNA

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here restrain your hair let no

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exhalation fog or mist the air this jumpsuit these tissue booths will rein

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you in as no other fashion can well the bouffant cap and blue or white is the

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great equalizer making grannies of all as we tend the sensitive but tensile

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strong that by dust specks come undone

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many of these poems I found that that come from that environment in that part of my life and I like would give them a

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voice but there was always some snark in that voice and I just learned to enjoy that

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this one is well although this this piece definitely had had more compassion

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and curiosity and maybe sadness in it zero defects is a motto from

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started in aerospace migrated into other industries and thus I walked in my first

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day of work and there it was on a doormat it kind of brought out a lot of my rebellious thinking especially being

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fresh out of college zero defects I want

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a new notion of perfection one to live with in my defect full humaneness bone

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cache chatter and thought rest let me

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admit the whole within the scrap and learn to find scrappiness on a par with

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the truth as truth moves to plural as we

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fail and flourish beyond the slashed zero so give me great pleasure as a poet

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to slant rhyme plural and zero but that really was a piece whereas I got stuck I

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had to go back to my my tool which is really working by sound and especially

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bowel sounds I never would have found thought breast if I hadn't gone back to humaneness

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and that allowed me to proceed because I had gotten very stuck up to then so I

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will close with one fairly short poem so that we have enough time for discussion

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conversation and questions I'm leaving out the landscape poems there are I do

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write about landscapes and other things besides kind of worlds of engineering

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and physics and this piece in particular really goes back to poets physicists

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engineers machinists I grew up with a

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shop it's called to the makers maker is the ancient Greek word for the modern

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greek word for poet and a poem is a making and I wrote it because I had the

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experience after reading a poem by Ted Kooser former u.s. laureate of as Emily

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Dickinson says those at the top of my head were taken off and I think that was 19th century speak for having your mind blown really so I

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read this poem of kusers and I had that I have chills just describing it and I thought wow I want to tell him I want

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him to know I still need to do that he is he areas in the Midwest and how often

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do we have that experience and we can't tell this the maker of that piece of art

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or piece of equipment great invention

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because they're long dead or somehow remote from us so this poem started out

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of that desire to tell them to the makers I want to tell them all of them

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the living and the dead not about gratitude I want them to know

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to tell them that it happens years or ages after their labors

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it happens with their work in my hand on a bowed page at or near the end of a

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phrase a fissure opens onto the deep lake of their making its slate skin and

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forested rim tools strewn on the silty bottom wavering shapes soft with life

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along grooves and shanks through this water through murk and Sun shaft and

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clear shoals the pressure building or falling off they'd ov and rose time and

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again hauling gleaning and leaving the

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lake to make a portal from words so with

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that I invite Roger up to join me in

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conversation

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my water yeah well thank you very much

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Lisa thank you for sharing your opponents with us and I would say reading them and also discussing them in

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a very engaging way I think you describe this as our living room so we'll have a

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very informal conversation yeah looking

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for the model things that actually there was a little bit about your biography

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which came first you think in your life the physics and the engineering or the

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verse or did they sort of grow together with you well I noticed you phrase that very carefully because when we met prior

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to this event and I said oh I often get the question of why did you switch and I

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say well I didn't switch I think in terms of you know initial exposure I had

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I was fortunate to grow up with people working very earnestly in arts and in

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sciences but I didn't necessarily have those labels on them so with a father

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who was an engineer and a builder there was always this you know well we're

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gonna do these things that I only later found out were math that most say 1st or 2nd graders don't get to do and then

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having painters and musicians on the other side of the family I think though if I put all of it into

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one big category it was design and so

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whether I was drafting and I thought I invented drafting whether I was drafting

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and designing a building or a piece of clothing it all felt like the same to me

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but in terms of you know explicit immersion it was probably the writing

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because you're given opportunities to do that sooner in school you know like in

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elementary school and it was in high school though that I really started to focus more in poetry

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but at the same time I was determined to become an astronaut and so I was

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studying physics at the same time I didn't I didn't separate them more until

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I decided I needed periods of dedicated study in one or the other

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your father was clearly a large influence upon you and it's pretty an engineer at amount of numbers but was he

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also a man of letters was he some who care deeply about language was even a poet he was not a poet he wrote very

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well and he communicated well and I think that goes back to just those tools

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of thought that will come out wherever and that of course was an era where you

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didn't study say stem to the exclusion of the humanities just as you know you

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came out of that same kind of background and I'm he always impressed upon me writing down and getting your thinking

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clearer whether you're working on an essay or solving a calculus problem you have to write it down and and see you're

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thinking he was definitely a practical genius I think in minute he usually

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figured out the simplest least fancy way to do something amazing and may or may

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not have been credited for it you know but really the gift was that I grew up in a house where I had this model all

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the time of this absolute love of making things of making mistakes of pursuing

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those of knowing it's not going to be ideal and tinkering which is another map

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to discovery just to to tinker and always building and making things whether they were models or or full-size

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full-size they were playing at one point and your mother you mentioned the other side of your family you said my mother's

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side were musicians and tailors seamstresses painters there was music in

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my father's side as well my mother had that amazing capacity to know how to support whichever way interests were

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going and I remain very grateful for that and she still is extremely

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Porter than that but she definitely my grand my maternal grandmother was a painter and designer and her husband a

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pianist I could surrounded by by art

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especially my grandmother's yes yeah we turned to the craft of poetry and

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obviously it's there's no simple answer to these questions but if if you're

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trying deciding you want to write a poem does it sort of grow from the inside out

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or do you have what people often accuse scientists of having quite incorrectly a

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great master planner they go to them fill in the pieces along the way yes

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both so you know we can have a very

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strong desire to write a particular piece whether or not that meets some kind of lyric impulse we we don't know

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but for me poems really I can hold these

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things that I know I want to write about what typically happens is I will hear

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something Musa here's the musical language or I will see something and a

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phrase arises I haven't haven't gotten to that point of development personal

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development where I had this nice space between experience and putting it into

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language so I will come up with a phrase and if it intrigues me if it's rhythmic

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and musical I will follow it and I do work by ear very much like writing a song and I need to hear what comes next

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if I don't it'll sit there but I will

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often build it out and I'll use the tools of craft whether it's choosing a

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metrical structure choosing a complete existing structure like a sonnet or

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blank versts I enjoy playing first free verse as well in free first it's not so

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free because you have to make every decision so sometimes I will look for a

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model if I'm really stuck and I know I want to write about something I will take a

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model and just work through it because that will force me at least to find out things I didn't know and then I can take

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that like those are like studies and and hopefully move into actually creating

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this piece in some ways it's like growing it crystal yeah you know one

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follows the reductionist zeal of a particle physicist the poem becomes a series letters and spaces of punctuation

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have we back off from that a little bit to the atoms of the business which might be the words you sort of alluded to this

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and the answer has to be both I know but a word has the sound right you say the

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music there and so on but it also has to make connections illusions metaphor however you want to put it to it to

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other ideas or things that you may be sharing with the reader how do you

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balance those two when you're looking you're stuck in you the word and you know there's a word that ought to fit there right so there's there's a duality

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in physics yes and it was duality and writing so part of it is trusting that

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those connections you're making in the sound patterns there is a there's some

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knowledge in those connections I mean we and this is you know this is a field

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they say in psychology and neuroscience that we do have some very visceral and emotive connotations with sound patterns

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and and the muscular structures that go with them and we inherently know we can hear you know a very very tiny clip of a

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piece of music and know if it's a sad and melancholy piece or you know there are rhythms that go with dirges and

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rhythms that go with celebration and so for me I tend to be very sensitive to

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the sound patterns and I trust that there is some kind of meaningful

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connection or I will look for the meaningful connection or I'll take it as

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a challenge you know like if someone in an improvisation gives you two things and says

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the connection sometimes they really do I think we are predisposed to find

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things that fall within the scope of our Curia so that is where I think those

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those come together and it's this big thrill when you know hey this is going

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to get me - yeah this idea I'm hoping to to build and learn more about going the

42:01

other way and we look at the large-scale structure on the screen and so we look

42:06

at look at your book you had essentially three themes here you split the phones

42:13

into three themes was that a conscious thing or something or an organization I should say what they are asked I retold

42:20

kingdom of secrets of markets those are the three themes they're good descriptive words but was that a

42:26

conscious thought started just a way of organizing them at the end that is something that's like this process once

42:33

you start to see work come together it's very much like listening to your data and you look for trends and you look for

42:41

themes to emerge and start to look at the wave that sub groups seem to

42:47

organize and the Kingdom of Secrets was definitely this coherent group of poems

42:53

about working in the military-industrial complex especially place where words actual words are very tightly controlled

43:01

and that was also like you know the the Draenei through through the underworld

43:06

and out ask I retold really kind of captured those landscape pieces and

43:14

exploring places that I've lived in their influence on me and then models

43:21

was the hardest one to figure out it's not like you just put all this all these

43:26

poems that don't fit in one into another and you do find when you're putting together a manuscript and I know several

43:32

of these faces that I recognize here from my poetry family and people know what this is like you know you you try

43:40

to find how the work comes together there are people who have projects that go the other way they're going to build

43:45

into a theme and sometimes it's kind of a midpoint between those

43:51

but the models I suddenly realized we're both literal and figurative because I

43:56

grew up with a model builder in physics we use models and we make models and

44:04

then as growing up in especially in the 70s as a girl you know we're exposed to

44:12

these models of what is feminine what is sexy what what are you supposed to be what are you not supposed to be and so

44:19

all of those really came into models and then there's this fascination with things and poems about things which are

44:25

usually I'll discover some kind of model in there and then the closing piece

44:30

really is that Vitruvian model yes and growing up with that it's kind of the ideal of Western rational scientific

44:38

thought that leads to everything wonderful and wanting to free that from gender especially yes yeah I could get

44:49

no better person to make this contrast between the tinkering the modeling the

44:57

creative process in the one hand and engineering and science and then the other hand in in writing and in

45:05

particular in poetry how how do you there's obvious differences and there

45:12

are not many poems written by 20 authors for example and can you can you imagine

45:18

that from yet you know so I'm most scientific papers are those collaborative processes and squeeze out

45:24

any poetry I hadn't been but but can you see any other similarities and

45:31

differences between those two well you know there are people who will now

45:36

crowdsource a poem or work collaboratively but we do we collaborate

45:42

with the past certainly yes you know we are taking every time you act you're

45:48

right it's an act of criticism and you are taking the work that came before you and either you're in conflict with it

45:57

you're in concert with it some combination of those and we do solicit

46:02

the the feed the comments the the deconstruction and

46:07

help support and reconstruction from our peers so many writers do work with other

46:14

writers to critique each other's work and help help you know not only to to

46:20

improve a piece refine it but to support us in that process so there is a lot of

46:27

collaboration I think it's just not always simultaneous you miss develop a list of all themselves and right exactly

46:34

you you won't find it all yes it's not necessarily simultaneous and it also doesn't happen within the same body of

46:40

work yes yes I think that might be actually quite a good time to ask the

46:45

audience for questions so or comments or even a poem maybe so there are over do

46:51

cover roaming mic or if you're in the middle or is what yes you can share maybe yes hi thank you for sharing your

46:58

poetry that was lovely my son is also an engineer and a poet and he strongly

47:05

prefers in his poetry to work in formal structures so a sonnet or a particular

47:12

rhyme scheme or a particular meter

47:17

because he feels like it imposes discipline and the chat and makes it a

47:24

bigger challenge and he's sort of scornful of the freeform poetry that doesn't have to conform to a particular

47:31

structure I'm wondering about your thoughts on on meter versus nine well

47:36

you would have you would have meter in whether you're in an open forum or a fixed form but we are free to create

47:44

successful or unsuccessful poems in either mode and it's really a trade-off

47:52

because you have you have a set of freedoms and a set of requirements in

47:58

each and they're different so we might find ourselves constantly migrating to

48:03

one or the other the open forum or the fixed form without an awareness of why

48:10

we we're more comfortable in one or the other and it's a huge leap as an

48:16

investigator or may when you come into that mode of conscious compositional choices whether

48:24

you're composing an experiment or a piece of art so when you start to become aware of why you're making those choices

48:31

and all of you suddenly have a lot more tools to make the choices when you

48:37

become aware of the need to make them each time so in a fixed form some of those choices are already off the table

48:43

so it frees you up to do more I mean you have more attentive energy available to

48:49

to work because you're not deciding on the line length or the number of lines or the rhyme scheme in free-verse you

48:56

have to make all of those decisions and hope they're all really fitting to what you want to do the other though the

49:03

other kind of gift of working in a an existing form is that it forces you to

49:09

find connections that you might not find otherwise because you have to you have to build that line out to a certain

49:16

length or you have to meet a rhyme scheme and not have it sound hokey you

49:23

want a lovely rhyme which doesn't mean it has to be hidden but but that word still needs to work the phrase that

49:28

still need to work so gifts on both sides and I think the more aware we are

49:33

of why we make those choices and what options we have the better we you know our makings will be ever you do it's ha

49:44

you know sometimes sometimes it's harder than others you know really some pieces arrive quickly as gifts and others can

49:52

take days weeks months years and decades

50:25

yes I mean I have some work that that's in progress now and some of it when I say

50:31

in progress sometimes it has to wait because you're just too busy and yes you

50:37

kind of you can go anywhere in terms of distance and time in a poem it's not to

50:44

say you have no constraints because you do have constraints but you're you're free to explore and to build out a lyric

50:50

a narrative a lyric narrative in that way and I it's just like science fiction

50:57

novels you you create this space for both yourself and the reader or listener

51:04

to experience that so for me I don't

51:09

consciously say this is called science fiction but I might be yeah or going

51:16

into a world you know especially there's some planetary bodies that I really am intrigued by right now and so exploring

51:24

them and how to describe them and you know where can we put ourselves or or or RV ourselves as viewers or or people

51:32

experiencing it you know you can be right there on the surface if you like

51:37

look forward to that thank you

51:52

[Laughter] well the kind of tongue-in-cheek answer

52:00

is when you sit with them for such a long time or when you are busy as

52:05

someone else's employee doing something else and you know you have to carry them

52:10

in your head and you can only work on what you're able to memorize and you're building them that way then they're there and I have a very oral memory for

52:20

and visual both but so for a long time I had memorized the del squared operator

52:27

in spherical polar coordinates I could recite the entire thing well it had a it

52:34

was because of the rhythm you know it was one over R squared partial partial R as if that's all I remember at this

52:40

point but it's like those you know songs that you can't get out of your head you

52:47

know it's not that they all stick but when I built by ear there you know and

52:53

and I had teachers who made us recite from memory because that's how we would we would learn what is memorable so part

53:01

of its personal the way I work and and some of it's a gift and I do find though

53:07

that if I haven't read a piece in a long time then if I'm reading in front of a large group I can go into that mode you

53:14

know that's the way to teach physics is verse oh yeah so my question was about

53:28

like sorry okay so I just want to say thank you for coming as a physicist and

53:35

as a poet I really appreciate like just being in this room and like being in community with other people who think interdisciplinary think in those ways

53:42

but um I know you already talked or touched upon like the military industrial complex and like gender

53:48

models and I'm I'm curious as to like your process in terms of where you

53:54

derive urgency in your writing and also in moving through interdisciplinary

53:59

worlds how you ground yourself while you're writing hmm grounding is one of those life

54:06

skills that just doesn't seem to go away you know I it's a little hard to get my

54:14

head around the question in terms of urgency it's kind of like conflict or

54:23

desires you know like oh I really want a life partner or oh I'm really

54:29

uncomfortable about whatever this is I knew the military industrial complex for

54:34

me was so rich and also so conflicted because I couldn't work in the ways

54:40

where I felt most valued and I was being like the eldest son you know going into

54:47

my fathers and grandfathers profession and they were hardly any women that you know when it was like in hidden figure

54:53

it was like three blocks to find a ladies room or but the urgency is

54:59

something that I have an intuitive sense about or you know the universe keeps

55:04

putting it in front of you coming up hoping that we'll meet with the lyric impulse is something that I

55:12

think practice can help with some people do you know right no matter what it

55:18

sounds like I would be very picky and I would want to like I know that sounds like a poem but it isn't some of these

55:25

pieces I just had to hold until I felt I had the permission to work on them so

55:32

some of that is self permission others is oh I've signed an agreement how do I

55:38

work around that poetry is though in all aspects of life an art of saying what

55:44

cannot be said and so even if you're prohibited from saying things and I have poems in an essay about that you can

55:51

still find ways to explore it and to to share it that exploration invite a

55:57

listener into it that's one other we can

56:02

also we can also talk in the reception as well so when we have one more question and then

56:16

I was interested that you used words to describe how you arrived at a conclusion

56:21

at the beginning you refer to bias and being told what to look for what the

56:28

result would be you may be aware that this is a common problem not so common

56:34

but an occasional problem in science where physicists latch on to certain

56:40

beliefs because of their beauty their symmetry things like symmetry principles

56:45

and conservation laws are cherished by physicists who sometimes extrapolate

56:51

them beyond the experimental proof there are some famous examples of that having

56:57

to do for example with the concept of conservation of parity the fact that we

57:02

have a right hand means that left hand and then reactions that are viewed in a

57:09

mirror should certainly be possible turns out it's not true and yet people

57:15

left leap to the conclusion that even though this was proven in certain cases

57:21

that it was a universal law which it was not leading to a revolution and

57:26

understanding of science back in the 1950s so I just wanted to point it out

57:33

that physicists are also subject to being led in wrong directions by being

57:41

enamored of certain well I had hoped to imply that I included all of that yeah and that's what I meant by how do we

57:48

stay honest you know what keeps us honest and becoming aware of the models

57:53

that are at play in our mind or the constructs you know such as parody or becoming aware of our habits of thought

58:00

and our habits of working you know and and when we need a question and how we

58:08

need to question so that's a matter of practice and a matter of building a

58:15

toolset really for asking those kinds of questions and remembering to put them in

58:21

you know to bring them into our process because especially when you have an outside directive on where you're

58:27

supposed to be looking or what type of thing you're supposed to be finding the pressures to go in that direction

58:33

are are intense and it's very easy to fall into these habitual you know

58:39

cognitive diagrams of where the knowledge falls are what phenomenon tends to be here in which which there

58:47

and how they how they are related those are all areas that are you know we have existing patterns that we want to put

58:54

the knowledge into that sounds like wise advice intense science and so science I

59:01

think we close up now I was gonna offer as a gift just a beloved poem that's

59:08

also from the sky as many of these pieces are upon by Hafiz

59:14

translated by Daniel lijinsky and it's a piece that I often return to especially

59:20

now for calm and for insight it's called this sky this sky where we live is no

59:31

place to lose your wings so fly fly fly

59:40

so thank you I think [Applause]

59:54

and thank you so much wonderful questions we could just go on but I hope you'll bring your questions

1:00:00

to the reception afterwards I want to thank Lisa and Roger my colleagues

1:00:07

Rachel Yael Linda chuckling for the photos and a special thanks to Lisa

1:00:13

Bonet our chief engineer here at slack who introduced us to Lisa so please join

1:00:19

us thank you [Applause]

SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory